Your tax dollars hard at work
TSA is about to prove once again what a bunch of incompetent fools they are. It is likely they will announce on Friday the relaxation of air safety rules to shorten the list of items banned from carry-on luggage. Among the things soon to be permissible are scissors less than four inches and screwdrivers less than seven.1
Where to start? What idiot decided that a seven inch screwdriver is as dangerous as a four inch pair of scissors? Who needs a screwdriver on an airplane anyway? Are they trying to make it easier for appliance repairmen or computer technicians to bring their work with them on the plane? How about making sensible restrictions on scissors like they have to be blunt nosed? Or they have to be the "safety" scissors designed for preschoolers? Honestly, the only people I've heard having issues with being unable to bring scissors on board are mothers who are trying to keep their children entertained. Safety scissors would take care of the kiddies and cut yarn (if knitting needles were on this new list—because twelve inch knitting needles might go all the way through the body, but a seven inch screwdriver will only go most of the way through) and thread—assuming two inch needles for embroidery or cross-stitch make the list.
There is also talk of making screening agents federal air marshals. Are you kidding me? I'm all for making changes so that security screener isn't a dead end job on par with fast food engineer. People who have chances for advancement and real career opportunities are more likely to have incentive to be competent and efficient, in other words more like the woman who X-rayed my photo backpack and hand searched it twice before asking me if there was anything in the bag that might look like an antenna, whereupon I told her how to find the cable release that had wedged itself into a crevice in the bottom of the bag and less like the woman who unzipped the bag just far enough to see there was a camera in the top and zipped it back up. If you're going to drag me out of line to do a visual search, then, dammit, you'd better do a thorough search! The X-ray machine told you there was a camera in there!
But air marshals? If they want to be a federal air marshal what is stopping them now? I assume air marshals have to attend some kind of police academy. They are carrying a weapon and are presumably trained in defusing tense, potentially violent situations. Will this mean that each and every TSA screening agent will have to attend a training academy first? Does that sound completely unrealistic and unlikely to happen to anyone besides me?